There are hundreds of ways to explore (parts of) the Milky Way galaxy online and even on your smartphone if you have the right app, but what about one that can explore all of it?

That's just what Google have done with with a new web experiment called 100,000 Stars.

..using imagery and data from a range of sources, including NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), we were recently able to take one small step in that direction by plotting the location of the stars closest to our sun.

And it's impressive.

As the blog post points out: "Using your mouse or trackpad, you can zoom in and out to explore our galaxy. Zooming in reveals the names of the most prominent stars close to our sun". Clicking each name shows more info on the star, and a digital rendition is shown.

There's also an option to take a tour at the top left of the page, and the site uses Chrome’s support for WebGL, CSS3D, and Web Audio.

Unfortunately the site doesn't work in Internet Explorer 10, but it will render in Firefox following our own testing, as well as Opera and Safari which all support WebGL. Check it out!